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As an MBA graduate I’d agree that pouring water on your head for a good cause sounds tempting. Bang for your buck in NPO advertising is a difficult gig. But don’t forget that wasting water is an abomination for a good part of the World – that insignificant other who don’t receive potable water. And don’t forget that 85 per cent of the World live on the driest half of the planet. In a similar manner it’s probably in bad taste to crack an egg on your head for diabetes (or the Not for Profit, JDRF – Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation).

Consider this for a second. Food waste is a major problem in our society. About one third of food that we currently buy is wasted. In less affluent countries the same amount is lost due to lack of refrigeration and other constraints. Food is a valuable resource. It’s waste is a current global issue.

It’s bad enough that we let food go off in our refrigerator and then dump it into the rubbish. How arrogant we are to waste perfectly edible food, instead of cracking rotten eggs on our heads. As though eggs and diabetes and influenza are a natural marketing fit. Yes, I’m dubious on that relationship.

Also, realise that the food you buy doesn’t arrive out of thin air. And eggs don’t arrive like a puff of magic out of a chicken’s eager loins.

It takes a whopping 53 gallons of water to produce 1 egg. The chicken that produces the egg required resources to sustain in the way of food, shelter and maintenance. The egg didn’t wrap itself in a carton and arrive in your refrigerator. No. It passed through a factory at industrial cost (labour, lubricant for the machinery, electricity, the steel in the machines, the creation of those machines and the mining of the ore that became the factory).

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The 288 page, 8.8 x 10 inches, 3.7 pound hardback copy of Carlo Mollino: Polaroids by Fulvio Ferrari and his son Napoleone Ferrari is an extremely well produced photobook. The cover is an opulent red fabric with a reproduced Mollino polaroid attached in the centre and the inside cover design at back and front smacks of opulent material to the taste of the photographer.

Carlo Mollino (1905-1973) was the son of an affluent engineer, Eugenio Mollino, from Turin, Northern Italy. Carlo was a successful designer, architect and photographer; an aviator and a trained engineer. He’d published Il Messagio Dalla Camera Obscura in 1949, republished under the English translated title Message from the Darkroom in 2007, with statuesque models and discussion about the nature of photography.

He owned a number of properties. The affluent large apartment he inhabited in Turin with antique furnishings and a housekeeper. He owned a 2 story house in the hills above Turin called Villa Zaira (purchased in 1960). And he had the use of his father’s prestigious studio in Turin for work – the place he made the first black and white polaroids of the project. However, Carlo Mollino also purchased, but never spent a night in, what is now known as Casa Mollino, an 18th Century house on the banks of the Po River in the historic centre of Turin. Carlo Mollino spent years and great expense reconstructing the Casa Mollino, calling it in his drawings “Warrior’s House of Rest”. Fulvio Ferrari, co-author of this book, is the current owner of Casa Mollino.

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